As he crossed London's Waterloo Bridge one September afternoon in 1978,
a middle-aged foreigner was jostled by a man with an umbrella. The
encounter looked as harmless as the weather; in fact, it was to recall
the more lurid adventures of 007. For the foreigner was Bulgarian
Georgi Markov, the stranger was a hired assassin, and the umbrella tip
held a pellet loaded with ricin, a deadly poison. The notorious
"umbrella murder" occurred because of the information contained in this
chilling memoir, written after the...